The Evolution of a Product Owner — a comparison of popular Product Management Maturity Models

A Product Owner is not a backlog administrator, nor a strategic role without hands-on tasks.

Product Owners are not responsible for defining the requirements of a feature. — the whole Scrum Team is.

Product Owner is a role that does Product Management and executes different tasks to fulfill good Product Management.

If you have your Product Owners specifying tickets you do it wrong and don’t get the most out of your Product Owners.

Does this sound right or wrong to you? Please let me explain.

I have been in different positions at a couple of companies, from small startups to big software development organizations. I was Head of Software Development, Product Owner, Scrum Master, Agile Coach, and Software Engineer. I was even a classical Project Manager and Change Agent.

So, I have seen a lot. The common understanding of the Product Owner role differs a lot, depending on with whom you talk.

This is bad because different understandings and expectations lead to conflicts and may make people unhappy. Imagine you start your new role as a Product Owner at a company and after a couple of weeks you figure out that they live the role in a very different way than you would like to live it. You might leave the company after a couple of months because the discrepancies are too big.